


TARDIS in a Shell

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Loosely inspired by the little mermaid, Romance, Space mermaids, Who travel through space and time, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2994308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where the Doctor is also a merman who travels through time… and eventually, space. But it’s still him and Rose, running, swimming and falling in love. </p><p>OR the one where Time Lords are also Merfolk, the TARDIS is an ethereal conch shell and Rose still falls in love with Nine, no matter what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TARDIS in a Shell

**Author's Note:**

> For fluffy-socks on tumblr, who requested "little mermaid, Doctor/Rose." I'm sorry this is extremely late but I hope you enjoy it. It's not the 'little mermaid' but more Doctor who if Nine was also a Merman... and really excessive prose, but I hope you enjoy it anyways!
> 
> Thank you to TheMadKatter13 for suggestions on how to make the summary match the story : )

They’re on a moon (an actual _moon_ that is pale green and sparkling in the sky) millions of light years away from Earth and everyone they know is either dead or will be. Rose and the Doctor’s fingers are so tight around each other’s that even steel lattices couldn’t match their strength. She feels his nails digging into her skin and welcomes the pain, the reminder that he’s _here_ and well—

“I can’t believe I’m going to die like this, on a forgotten rock in the middle of nowhere… because of _them,_ ” he snarls in that frightening tone that makes Rose think of fire and wind, obliterating planets.

“It’s gonna be alright, Doctor,” she lies. “We’ll get through this somehow.” They always do. Or did.

His harsh features fall and she can’t bear to look at those blue eyes in that moment. “Oh _Rose._ I’m so _sorry._ ”

“No,” she shakes her head furiously, “ _no,_ don’t be! I wouldn’t have missed this for the world! Dying with you, that’s not so bad, is it?”

He laughs, half in awe and half in despair. “No,” his thumb rubs over hers, “that’s not bad at all.”

They fall into a hush, listening to the blasts outside their hiding place. The green glows from blaster fire. The metal creatures moving closer to them, their blank eye stalks staring straight at them. _Exterminate. Exterminate._

“Rose?” he whispers.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says and then kisses her right on the lips before Rose feels something go over her head, fall against her neck and she looks down and sees it, glowing golden and emitting bright golden sparks as it surrounds her and no-what-are-you-doing-Doctor-why-did-you-give-me-the-TARDIS—

But he pushes her back, gently, his blue eyes burning with that same tenderness as he takes in a breath and _blows out a breath_ —

The TARDIS shell around her neck meets that breath and Rose finds herself hurtling through the universe, a bubble of golden and blue sparks protecting her from the black of space.

-

_“Do you know how Time Lords are born, Doctor?”_

_(“No,” he’ll answer someday, “but I know how they die. They burn.”)_

-

They meet this way:

Rose hates sitting at the little souvenir shop by the ocean. No one ever comes to buy the badly painted seashells or oyster key chains that they sell for a few pence. Every souvenir shop on the island sells the same stuff. Tourists rarely come and if they do, it’s for the postcards or the ‘authentic treasures’ found no where else! They want stories of sightings of strange sea monsters and sharks (honestly, more likely to drown by the cold rocks than meet a shark this far North.)

She wonders if this is how life is gonna be—her, smiling emptily at strangers to tell them the same old tall tales, going to the pub with Mickey, watching telly with her mum. Repeat. Like waves drifting in and out. She stares out at the ocean sometimes and pictures what’s out there beyond the distant blue horizon, how far would she have to reach just to touch it?

“No where,” her mum would say. “You ain’t going anywhere near the ocean, sweetheart, the ocean—”

“Took Dad away,” she’d repeat. “I know.”

Doesn’t stop her from hearing the music though. Waves lapping up at each other as the earth’s soothing heartbeat. The English sea is bottled ice in liquid form, harsh against the rocks and salty to the brim but Rose loves it.

Maybe it’s the only thing she loves about this place besides the chips and her family and Mickey. If she could, she’d swim out in the waves until her skin was so numb that she felt the warmth of the Earth’s soul filling her up.

But— _your daddy drowned, Rose, the ocean ate him up_ —she can’t.

So Rose settles for closing her eyes as she sits out on the patio, looking over the ocean, memorizing her song. She’s almost fast asleep, not that her boss Wilson cares (he’s probably snoozing upstairs in the shop himself) when she hears it.

Cries. Pain.

Sticklike figures (skinny blokes really) holding a man up and beating him, making him cry out and bleed.

Rose doesn’t stop to think about what her mum told her to do in these situations (call 999 and let the proper authorizes handle it) or Mickey (stay back, babe, I got this!) She just grabs the nearest object—a snow globe—and runs off the porch towards the attackers, throwing the globe at their backs, watches the scattered glass rain down on the pavement.

They freeze and Rose uses that shock to pull the bloodied man towards her, out of the attackers’ grasps. She spares a glance at the poor bloke—middle aged, tall, shaved head, leather jacket, big ears and blue eyes… like an ocean storm—before she focuses on the attacks and sees…

Shop dummies.

Rose splutters, “Is this some kind of joke?! A film or something?!”

The dummies creep closer, their mouths open and Rose sees actual guns shoved in as tongues now pointed at her and powering up with some sort of light—

A warm hand grabs hers.

“Run,” the man whispers.

And they do.

-

_“Have you ever felt time stop, Doctor?”_

_“Of course I have, I’m a Time Lord.”_

_“No, I mean… without_ you _making it happen. Just feeling like somehow, without your doing, the whole world has just… stopped. A feeling, really.”_

_He looks at her tenderly then._

_“Yes, I have.”_

_(Blood. Fists. He deserves it all for what he did to his people and if he can save the Autons, save the ripples of his mistake then—_

_Glass falling. Hands pulling him in and he sees—_

_Her. So furious and brave and the Doctor…_

_—Falls_.)

-

“To the ocean!”

He pulls her towards the docks. Rose doesn’t turn around, afraid that if she does, she’ll see the dummies almost mouth to mouth against her. They turn corners, pass by boats and fishing nets and—wait!

Rose tugs the man’s hand back and grabs the rope. She glances over at the man who is grinning madly, blood dripping from his teeth as he realizes her plan.

“Ready?” she asks.

He cranes his head.

They throw the net over the dummies, seeing plastic limbs falling apart against each other with the loud smack of the netting. But the limbs still wiggle and move, like beached fish and Rose runs with the man, as fast as they can, before the other dummies can put back their limbs.

Just as they reach the edge of the docks, surrounded by water, Rose feels her stomach plummet. “Crap,” she looks over her shoulders and sees the remaining dummies catching up to them, blocking their only exist. Rose glances back down at the water. Should they jump? Does this man know how to swim?

She’s picked up some moves (aim for the balls and dash like hell) but these are shop dummies; maybe she should push them into the water or—

The man tightens his grip on her hand and smiles softly at her.

“It’s gonna be alright,” he says although he has no way of knowing It but the breathless lilt of his voice has Rose nodding.

He reaches over with his other hand and fishes out a dark blue pendent hidden under the collar of his jumper. Rose nearly gasps at how vibrant the pendant sparkles, it looks like a conch shell dressed in the sparkling blue of the night stars. Its surface is surrounded by curious winding blue circles with other circular symbols inscribed between, as if entwining the shell itself in a net of circular inscriptions. And… and it seems to _glow_ like the dancing light reaching through the surface of water. Pulsing. Alive.

“Bring us to safety,” the man whispers, his lips against the pendant and then he gives a deep breath and blows.

Rose gives a strangled sound of wonder as a swirling bubble of blues and golden sparks parts from the man’s lips, growing until it surrounds both Rose and the man inside.

“Hold on to something,” the man seems to joke with that manic movement.

“Like what—” Rose nearly says before she’s falling backwards and there’s water everywhere on all sides, oh god, water everywhere and she’s not soaked at all how…?

They’re _inside_ a glowing bubble, rushing through the ocean’s depths.

Rose stares, wide-eyed at the man and her jaw drops as she looks at his legs. Or not-legs. Or tail. A gorgeous black tail that has white spots like constellations and faded whites like the swirling galaxies above… galaxies darkened with deep scars etched on his tail…

“You… you’re a mermaid!”

“Well, merman. But what is gender but a fluid identity constructed by certain cultures, really?”

“So—you _are_ a mermaid?”

“Time lord, actually. Different names. Same thing,” he seems to hum thoughtfully. “That a problem?”

“No! No. That’s fine, I, it’s just amazing. Never met a merperson before,” Rose babbles, trying not to be obvious with her staring. Her first instinct is to reach over and touch his tail, see the texture, but she doesn’t because that would be rude and what is with people and the curious urge to touch anyways—

“Alright then,” he grins.

Rose can’t help but smile back.

-

_They do this a lot. Rose sitting in the TARDIS bubble, curled up with one of her woolen blankets from home, pressed up against the edges, watching the waters drift past. On the other side of the bubble, the Doctor swims, searching for underwater herbs he needs for his collection and checking on the local wildlife._

_“Sometimes I think life is a lot like the ocean.”_

_“Oh?”_

_She starts, the blanket slipping off her head. She didn’t think he could hear her through the barriers of the bubble._

_“Well…” she watches as he swims up to her, hands pressed against the other side of the bubble. The TARDIS seems to hum from around his neck. “It’s just so immense, you know? We just get swept up in the moment until we can’t swim out.”_

_“Yeah…” he doesn’t take his eyes off her, “that sounds ‘bout right.”_

-

“Alright, so what’s going on?”

Rose dives into the situation without hesitation. Aliens from another world coming to claim humanity’s oil-drenched oceans? Fine. Okay, how do we stop it? Some sort of device you throw at some kind of Nestine consciousness that is probably nesting in an area saturated with oil? That works too!

This Time Lord/Merman bloke is also an alien too? Cool. He’s called the Doctor and insists on the ridiculous ‘the’ sometimes? Whatever. And his bubble lets him travel the oceans and even land (?) almost instantaneously? Convenient. Apparently his task is to watch over the balance of the earth or something? Right, she can ask more about that later.

Stopping the end of the world at the moment sounds like a priority and if she thinks about all the extra details for any longer, Rose might just explode from questions and wonder. Part of her really is panicking because what can _she_ do against plastic dummy aliens?

She’s just a shop girl.

But he holds out his hand and looks at her like she’s worth _something_ and when Rose sees his attempt for peaceful negotiation fail, she knows she has to do something. She _can._ There is no dilly dallying about it. She’s got a great arm from playing softball with Mickey and a killer kick, so she throws a hook that knocks the anti-plastic into the consciousness and then she tackles the Doctor to the ground away from the edge.

His breath is full of wondrous laughter as the TARDIS glows around them and takes them away.

-

_“So why a shell?” she asks once, poking at the TARDIS pendant around his neck._

_They are at the beach again, in Australia, with her feet dipped into the place where the shore returns to embrace the sand and him just lounging around in the waters, his tail dipping in and out of the waves like a blinking satellite._

_“Hm?” he blinks and she fights back a grin. They do that a lot, lately. Just sitting on various beaches around the world, comparing the different shades of sunset and blue horizon. Just sitting in tune with the world’s symphony of waves. Just listening to each other breathe._

_“You said once, that Time Lords could make their TARDIS look like anything. Was wondering, why a shell?”_

_He shrugs._

_“Broke the chameleon circuit actually… but was always fond of this shape. Shells can be such fragile things when abandoned. They crack. But they’re also strong and they house life and even when their host leaves… well… you can hear the ocean, can’t you?”_

_She frowns, remembering what he told her about that myth. That it wasn’t the ocean’s song trapped in a shell. That it was just the sound of blood pumping in human ears._

_“But—”_

_He laughs. “Yeah, I know what I told you before. But that was before. The whole planet turns and turns, all the oceans and forests and mountains, all of your cities, moving with it. Don’t you think, maybe, human brains pick on that? Imitate the sound of your little blue planet with those human heartbeats? Maybe it’s just your blood pumping when you put your shell to your ear… but maybe… maybe it’s the earth, in the end, too.”_

_She lets go of the breath that she didn’t even know that she was holding and can’t help but think that his eyes are so very blue._

-

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks and she wonders what he means. Around the world’s oceans? Protecting it as he does?

It would be amazing. But she has to say ‘no’ because there’s Jackie and Mickey and she’s still just a shop girl even if she did help save the world once. She has to take care of her family.

When his face falls and he just answers, ‘alright then’ with a quick duck back into the water, Rose wants to shout ‘wait!’ Her heart skips when she sees the last of his tail vanish into the murky blue before Rose has to force her feet to turn in the sand and trudge back up to the souvenir shop.

Except she hears the sound of the TARDIS again and she turns and he says, “Did I mention it travels through time?”

Just… yes.

-

_“Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”_

_She never asks if it travels in space too. If it could, then he would have said something, taken her to one of those amazing planets he’s always talking about like Women Wept or the Yeu Galaxy with its starlight water channels. But no, they only travel through time, always on Earth, always near a water source._

_She thinks of him telling her that his planet burned. She thinks of how he described the Time Lords, the protectors of Time and Nature’s balance on various planets before they become corrupt and turned to destroying each other. She thinks of him telling her he crash landed on Earth after he killed them all and how he never wanted to burn more in the water._

_He never looks up at the sky when she points up at the constellations, only at the water’s reflections. Is always distant, when they travel to the future, and alien immigrants ask about his knowledge of the stars._

_She doesn’t ask._

_-_

The world burns in the future. One moment, the Doctor is grinning at her in a boyish way. ‘Of course I’m so spectacular, Rose, look at me!’ Then the next moment, they are floating in boiling water that is red and bursting out.

Rose cries out, jumping away from the TARDIS bubble’s barriers but the Doctor holds her steady.

“Doctor, we have to get out of here, I don’t—”

“No.” He shakes his head. Quiet. Solemn. The burning water reflected in his eyes. “Look, Rose.”

She does.

The TARDIS floats them out of the water. They never feel the scorching heat because of the golden bubble that protects them but Rose imagines it eating at her face, eating up all the last souls on earth. Because this is her planet now.

Red. Molten lava. Cracks in the land. Fire exploding.

“What happened?” she sobs. _There’s no one left. Just me and an alien merman and his golden bubble._

His arms feel cold and his tail seems to flap over her legs in a protective curl.

“Eventually you humans used up your planet. Ruined it. Made it uninhabitable to live on. You’ve all left for the stars and abandoned the oceans to burn.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “That’s too… too cruel.”

She’s never thought much about being ‘green’ and environmentally friendly. She recycles when she can and they can’t afford to waste water or electricity at home. But things like global warming and fossil fuels seemed like fairy tales to her, so far away. Surely she’d be dead by the time this happened? It wasn’t her problem.

But she’s seeing it now and she can’t stop crying.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she doesn’t know why. Her fingers stretch out to the crackling land below them. “I’m so sorry.”

-

_Sometimes at night, they float in the middle of the waves like human boats do and she curls up in her blankets, sleeping to the sound of the Doctor’s tails lapping the gentle waves. Sometimes he thrashes around in the water outside the TARDIS and she has to pull him into the TARDIS, through the golden barrier and they end up curled up together, listening to each other’s hearts._

_They never speak of it because the Doctor’s wounds are still too deep and Rose never knows how much she should ask but in the mornings, he never hesitates to say one thing._

_“Thank you.”_

_Thank you so much._

_-_

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” the Doctor says when they end up in the middle of London (so many people in one place and Rose sort of wants to throw her arms around all of them and thank them for existing.)

“What? Why?” she laughs, wiping off her runny mascara.

“My people are dead.”

She feels like she is back in the burning water again.

“There was a war,” his voice seems to crack, “and I… I had to end it. I killed them all. And now I can never go back.”

He looks down at her, such a fragile smile on one so tall.

“Was selfish of me. Just wanted someone else to see it too. The end of their world. Wouldn’t blame you if you left now. I’m dangerous, me. The Oncoming Storm. All alone now.”

Rose opens her mouth, words of generic comfort ready to spill out when she sees the way his shoulders seem to hunch in, as tense as his fists. Her hands find his, instead, and gently intertwine their fingers together.

“You’ve got me,” she says.

And the way he looks at her then—she—she can’t—

She treats him to chips, trying to calm her beating heart.

They hold hands under the table, not willing to let go yet.

-

_“You know the fairy tale? The Little Mermaid?”_

_“What? That silly story? Wasn’t any Time Lord or Lady, I knew, that’s for sure. Bunch of bollocks really,” and she can’t help but snort at his claims._

_“Hey, she turned into a human for a while! And look at you, Doctor, you flip back from legs to no-legs like night and day!”_

_“Yeah, but it’s not possible to trade your voice away for a biological—oi, stop giggling!”_

_“Sorry!” she keeps laughing, “Just… you take it so seriously! Not everything has to have a scientific explanation. Sometimes… things just are. Maybe there was a Time Lady who came to Earth and lived as a human. Maybe she even lost her voice or something but it had nothing to do with sea witches. And maybe she even fell in love. Is that such a bad thing?”_

_“She turned into sea foam, in the end.”_

_“Ah, but, Anderson added another ending! What? I read! Mum used to have a big book of old fairy tales!”_

_“Oi, I know you can read! Never doubted that for a second!”_

_She sticks her tongue out at him._

_“So what was the other ending then?”_

_“She becomes an air spirit and she helps save other souls. I dunno. I kind of like that ending better. Like her love made her a better person, trying to help others.”_

_“Yeah… I like it too.”_

-

They travel through time together. There’s the time they ended up in the frozen Thames and had to charge through the ice with the TARDIS bubble and then ran into Dickens. There’s ‘I’m so glad I met you’ and ‘I could save the world but lose you’ when Jackie meets the Doctor and complains about her daughter running off with a fish. There’s an awkward break-up with Mickey but he helps her save the world too and they stay friends, even if the Doctor and Mickey call each other ‘Rickey’ and ‘Aqua Man.’

They meet David Suzuki and help save a reef from being farmed by aliens and the humans helping said-aliens. They go to the Marianas Trench and nearly wake a terrible Leviathan but they use the sounds of the rocks to record a lullaby to lull it to sleep in a never-ending loop. They see angel fish that actually fly up through the clouds in the 31st century and the missing link between fish and humans and dinosaurs with feathers and cat nuns in New New New (so many New’s) York and take whale rides in the world’s first underwater theme park (later freeing said whales… who were apparently capable of human speech too! That was brilliant!)

There’s hiking up in Japanese resorts, to purify the spa water and take a rare relaxing evening staring at the moon with stories of Japanese folklore. There’s canoeing down the Nile and meeting the real Cleopatra (who teaches Rose a thing or two about being a leader) and getting trapped under a steel machine in the Amazon River.

There’s so much running and flying in the TARDIS bubble, spying down on the world’s ocean covered surface.

But there’s swimming too.

( _Lightning, thunder roaring down over her and a tiny figure bobbing up and down and—_ )

…Swimming.

-

_“The sea’s done nothing good for us since we moved here,” Jackie always tells her after a long night at work. “We should just move back to London.”_

_They never do, of course._

_Pete loved the ocean so much that maybe Jackie is half in love with it too._

_-_

She doesn’t go into the water if she doesn’t have to. She’s content with watching the Doctor swim down to gather supplies or talk to the fish locals while she asks the TARDIS to bring her closer so she can see what’s happening.

“If you think it, the TARDIS will let you out any time, Rose,” the Doctor tells her with a reassuring grin, “and she’ll put a barrier around your head so you can still breathe. But don’t stray too far from her, Rose, or she might lose the connection and you’ll have to swim for the surface.”

It’s amazing, truly, and slightly terrifying to float in an expanse of nearly black blue and not have to fear bringing it in to her lungs. But if she stays afloat, all alone in the water for too long, well— _no, no, please—_ it’s best if she stays near the TARDIS.

-

_While he has his bad days with his nightmares, she has her occasional sad sighs when she sees a lone boat out in the sea._

_“Dad died out there,” she says once, answering his silent question. “He drowned… all alone.”_

_“Rose…”_

_“I… If there was one thing I could wish for… I wish he hadn’t been alone.”_

-

The Doctor takes her to see her Dad in his last minutes.

“That’s… that’s him, isn’t it?”

Lightning flashes mockingly, as if to answer ‘yes, you stupid girl’ and Rose fights the urge to throw her arms up at the violent winds. There’s a tiny black dot, thrashing up and down, growing smaller and smaller in the wild distance.

She can’t see him. She can’t see his face at all, even now, when she’s _here_ and all she can do is _watch, why_ —?

Rose spots a flash of dirty blonde, dunking into the blackish water and she doesn’t even think.

She jumps out of the TARDIS bubble’s glow and into the battling whirlpool-like waves.

Wind roars in her ears, hits her like jumping into several rinks of ice face-first. She thinks she hears the Doctor roaring her name. She thinks she can hear Dad screaming too if she ignores the pumping in her head.

But then it’s cold, so cold and Rose can’t see a damn thing in all the black-blue but she just kicks her legs feebly forward. She needs to reach him. Dad. She won’t let him be alone. She won’t make an excuse of getting seasick on boats. Not this time.

The currents slam her down and she’s spinning, spinning, so far away now, and when she inhales, it’s entering into her. All the Black-Blue. All the water. And Rose wants to choke but she can’t, she can’t and—

“ _ROSE_!”

Arms wrap around her. Lips touch her mouth and beautiful air enters in as those arms tighten around her.

They rush up into the surface.

-

_Don’t stray from the TARDIS (please Rose, he doesn’t say) you’ll drown._

-

He rushes her out of the TARDIS bubble when they get to the nearest shoreline and starts wrapping her in mountains of blankets first, refusing to look at her, hands twitching and going to her hands and shoulders at random moments.

Only after he listens to her frantic pulse beat in between his wrists, only after he stops sending her various glances of unreadable emotion, does he say, “What were you thinking, Rose?”

She looks down at the quilt patterns of moons and whales.

“…I wanted to save him.”

“Rose, you nearly _died_ , you shouldn’t have gone out of the TARDIS. There was a storm—”

“But he was dying! Right in front of me! I couldn’t, I couldn’t just do nothing—”

“ _Yes, you could have_!” he begins to shout. “We can’t meddle with fixed points in time, _especially_ our personal timelines! Don’t you think, if I could bring back my people, I would? If we bring people back who are supposed to be dead, the universe falls apart! Even for just one man!”

Her face goes pale at the thought of it. The universe falling apart, all because she tried to reach her father. A stupid wish that could have ended everything.

“M’sorry,” her fingers begin to shake, “I’m so sorry… I just…”— _couldn’t stay still when someone was dying, couldn’t stand to watch_ , she doesn’t say, but instead—“I should’ve been with him! He wanted Mum and me to come with but I… I was sick of fishing and I just wanted to stay home and I told him I was sick and he was _all alone_ , I should have _been there_ —”

“Oh, Rose,” he embraces her and she buries her face against his chest, both of them collapsing when his feet revert to his tail form.

Beyond them, the storm rages and Rose can’t help but join the Doctor in his trembling as they both cry for what they’ve lost.

-

_“When Time Lord cry,” a tree named Jabe tells Rose in the 51 st Century, “they say that the oceans in every galaxy tremble too.”_

_-_

The captain calls Pete to go on board and he’s flailing around with his luggage (honestly, Jacks, he doesn’t need to pack five dozen shirts on a three day trip!) thinking of his little Rose, hoping she’s alright. He’ll ring as soon as he’s back on land and take plenty of pictures. Maybe even catch some fish for them to eat.

His fishing pole clatters on the ground and he curses, reaching out to grab them when another hand hands it to him.

“Thanks, mate,” Pete laughs when he meets the stranger’s eyes… and nearly loses his breath when he sees her.

She looks like Jackie. And she has his eyes.

Then he blinks and shakes his head. It’s nothing. Just him being homesick already.

“Ah, no problem,” she shakes her head, a slight glisten to her eyes.

“You alright there?” he asks gently.

“M’fine!” she smiles and it makes him want to hug her for some reason, but not in a romantic way of anything like that (Jacks would murder him) but… as if she’s a small child and he… Well then. “You going on a trip?”

“Yup! Fishing with the boys, get a catch to bring home to my girls. Hopefully make up for another invention failed.”

She swallows and a large hand covers hers. Pete nearly punches the other bloke beside her (a creeper trying to hit on her?) but then the girl smiles at the other bloke and Pete thinks, _oh. Boyfriend, then._ And can’t help but be concerned at the bloke’s age (he better be taking care of her or… or what?)

“So…” Pete says awkwardly, part of him (irrational) wanting to lecture the bloke about taking advantage of younger girls and another part of him wanting to ask them along (or at least the girl, to get her away from the creepy bloke.)

She laughs then and Pete blinks in awe because she sounds just like…

“You’re a good man, Pete Tyler. Wonderful, even,” she throws her arms around him. “ _Thank you_ ,” and he feels something warm against his cheek before she steps back with that smile again. “Goodbye.”

He opens his mouth to ask what’s going on but then Bill is back, pulling Pete onto the boat, as if he doesn’t even _see_ the two strangers and when Pete turns around again, the two are walking away.

Holding hands.

-

_“…Thank you, Doctor,” she whispers to him, when she thinks he’s asleep beside her._

_When he’s sure that her breaths are slow and evened out, he rolls around to face her, her face illuminated by the reflections of stars in the sea._

_“…You never have to thank me for anything.”_

-

“You’re always holding hands, especially down there,” Mickey gestures to sea, “and you tell me you’re not together?”

She shrugs.

“It’s just something we have to do.”

Mickey snorts. “What? Afraid you’ll lose each other?”

She flicks Mickey’s nose.

“Something like that.”

Scared she’ll drown, more like. Scared, he’ll fall.

-

_I wish I could swim like you do, she never says, I wish I could feel what you do when you’re down there._

_‘You’ve got me,’ she said a long time ago, but her life is short and she hopes that when she’s gone he’ll find someone. Because she doesn’t want him to be alone either._

_No one should be._

_-_

There is something calming about hearing the world so quiet, yet not, and seeing seaweed seem to sway in tune with the schools of fish. Being underwater in the TARDIS is probably one of her favourite places to park. She could close her eyes forever, listening to that muted hymn.

The Doctor must notice her habit of listening and humming out random songs because one day he’s leading her into the 49th Century to the world’s first underwater restaurant run by Haruka Nanase and his husband Makoto and Rose’s mouth drops when she sees the huge orchestra set up in the gigantic glass dome.

There are fish all around the dome, fish and dolphins and even _people_ , in _formal swim wear_ (honestly, it’s scuba suits with bow ties or long skirts and jewels coupled with some sort of head-bubble-thing that reminds Rose of what the TARDIS does for her when she goes out underwater on her own) and all of them are _dancing_.

Her jaw drops at the sight of couples swaying back and forth like the seaweed, all above and around her, to the graceful waltzes of the orchestra while other couples eat at their tables.

“Well then,” the Doctor gestures to the orchestra, “looks like they’re short a singer… if you wanna lend them a hand?”

She gapes at him.

“I… me? No way… I can’t… can’t really sing. What about you, Doctor?” she teases.

“Me? Not a musical bone in me body!”

“Liar, I’ve heard you humming when you thought I was sleeping!”

“Et tu, Rose?! That was supposed to be a secret Time Lord thing, there!”

“More like you’re shy.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Oh, just kiss already!” a man, who later introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness, grins at them. “You two are getting me all hot and bothered and it’s not very fair unless you let me join in too!”

The Doctor just bristles at him while Rose giggles.

She ends up singing a duet with him after much teasing before things go wrong (as they usually do) and they have to stop a bunch of creepy gas mask children from converting every life form in the underwater city.

-

_“Do Time Lords dance, Doctor?”_

_“Do Roses swim?”_

_“Touché!”_

_-_

They do end up dancing.

Underwater, even.

He swirls her around and swishes currents into her hair, showing her ‘his moves’ and Rose can’t help but think that his tail is one of the most gorgeous things she’s ever seen and, god, she never wants him any different.

-

_“All things end,” he told her once._

_She thinks of little boats in storms and a lie of being sick, of her own trembling hands when she’s sometimes near the water._

_“I wish they didn’t.”_

_“…Me too.”_

-

“Let’s go into space!” Jack needles him. The TARDIS bubble has expanded, trying to accommodate more people. The Doctor refuses to swim besides the TARDIS anymore, not wanting to leave Rose and Jack alone together in a confined bubble.

“Jack,” Rose tries to warn him, shaking her head frantically.

The Doctor sees it.

He frowns, “I suppose we could go.”

“But Doctor—”

“It’ll be fantastic!” he grins too widely for Rose’s care.

“But—”

His eyes soften as he takes her hand again. “It’ll be alright, Rose. I’ve got you with me don’t I?”

-

_“The Time Lords nearly destroyed the universe with their war, nearly unraveled time itself. I had to end them. Time Lords, we watch the balance of the ecosystems of all planets… but we also wreck what we touch if we grow too arrogant. I just… I can’t go back into space. I can’t let the rest of the universe go into ruin again.”_

_“So you go to Earth? You’re not afraid of ruining the humans?” the voice taunts him._

_He wants to laugh._

_“The humans ruin themselves already.”_

_(And then he meets her. And selfishly, even though she’s so good, and he’s so tainted, he takes her.)_

_-_

“The Nui Moon of the Yeu Galaxy,” the Doctor introduces to them, “one of the only moons covered in liquid Yeuian particles, almost like Earth water, except you won’t drop in it. Like floating in space. Cept without all the death.”

Rose and Jack step out, entranced, hovering in oceans of pale green fog that cover the moon, and looking up to see the sight of other Yeuian planets sparkling in the distance.

There are buildings, too. Homes and offices that float along the Yeuian particles while people swim back and forth to them or take gondolas. The Doctor looks right at home there with his tail as all the other residents of the moon have tails too. But more swishy and delicate looking tails, like silk curtains fluttering in the moonlight.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathes.

“Yes, it is,” he says, and when she looks at him, she thinks maybe (just maybe) he’s talking about her.

But that’s just wishful thinking…

Then Jack shouts that everyone in the buildings are dead and that everyone should stay out in the Yeuian particle oceans, away from the floating cities and they are once again, caught up in trying to save a galaxy.

And the Daleks. The Daleks return.

-

_I could save the world but lose you too._

_(I don’t care.)_

_I’m so glad I met you._

_(Me too.)_

_Rose, you were fantastic… and you know what... so was I._

_(Don’t go, you stupid bastard mermaid, don’t you dare go, when you taught me to be better. That things can be better. And you know what, this can be better too—)_

-

There is war.

There is Rose and there is the Doctor, both of them holding hands, even at the end when everyone is getting wiped out by the Daleks.

There is a TARDIS and the Doctor kissing her away, back home.

And there is Rose, who looks down at the TARDIS around her neck, lifts it up and kisses the shell in return, praying, _please, let me save him._

-

_“What happens if someone else kisses your TARDIS?” Jack wonders. “Would it work for them?”_

_The Doctor shakes his head. “No. You saw what happened to Margaret Slitheen. You burn. That’s it. Any alien biology but Time Lord, can’t handle it.”_

-

She is water and fire and golden threads of time and she is burning.

The TARDIS sings to her, weaves in Time Lord songs and breaths, shows her the moon and the stars and everything and nothing and she _knows_ then the song of the universe and that everything has an end and a beginning alwaysalwaysalways—

She scatters Dalek particles across time and space, so they can be reborn and reworked into new forms of life. She heals Jack’s wounds with a wave her hands and she moves to bring the dead Yeuian people back to life but— _everything has it’s end_ —she can’t stop crying, trembling, screaming.

“Let it out of me, please, make it stop!”

The TARDIS, a being woven together by threads of gold, kisses her then and fades back into the shell before the same shell burns against her skin.

Rose falls into space.

-

_Sometimes the Doctor thinks the TARDIS pays Rose too much attention, constantly crooning to her when she sleeps, whispering things that even the Doctor can’t hear._

_It’s unnatural for his Shell to pay such care for another being besides her bonded Time Lord._

_They’ve been broken for a while, TARDIS and Time Lord, lost in their own madness. Clinging to the nearest human to fill the void (but not just any human, no, Rose Tyler is special because he’s never felt this way before—)_

_So she’s just lonely, his TARDIS, that’s all…_

-

When Rose wakes, she sees golden threads in, well, everything! And Jack is sleeping by her side, looking like he hasn’t slept in days while the Doctor’s grip is so tight it nearly cuts off her circulation.

“I… what’s happening?” she gasps, seeing the golden threads coming from _her_ of all people and that the TARDIS seems to have turned into a golden tattoo around her neck and collar bone.

“Rose!” the Doctor jumps up, gathering her in his arms so all she can smell is leather and ocean mist.

“Doctor?” she blinks and then remember, “Doctor, are you alright? You were nearly killed!” she saw him say ‘better a coward’ but from light-years away in the TARDIS bubble after she kissed it and then—

“I’m fine, I’m fine, you beautiful girl,” he whispers against her ear. “Are _you_ alright?”

“I…” she blinks, listening to the… the ocean and the stars all singing in her head and, “I can… I can still hear singing… not _everything_ , but… singing,” she trembles, “Doctor, what’s happening to me?”

He leans back and puts his warms hands on her face. “You saved us, Rose. That’s what happened.”

He doesn’t say anything more. Just hugging her and whispering endearments that she never imagined she’d hear from him and caressing her hair.

-

_This is what happens when a TARDIS falls in love with a human and tries to make her stay:_

-       _She nearly burns her and then tries to save her, infusing her very self with the human, putting her time on ‘hold’ for as long as she can._

-       _(Forever, if possible.)_

 

_This is what happens when a Time Lord (you mean, mermaid? Oh do shut it, Rickey!) falls in love with a human and tries to make it last:_

-       _He holds her hand and tries to make her stay when he can save her._

-       _He lets her go when he can’t.  
_

-       _She saves_ him _instead._

-       _(And she stays.)_

_-_

Did you hear the story of the last merman and the girl so in love with him she turned into golden light?

Don’t worry. It has a happy ending.

(And yes, they do kiss in the end, and it tastes like starlight and oceans dancing together for eternity.)


End file.
